Whew. It's been two days since the movers arrived to move all our stuff from one house to another (five blocks away), and it's all felt pretty crazy. One of the weirdest moments came on Wednesday morning when I was on the phone with our rental insurance company, changing our address, and they started asking me questions about the new house. I had to answer every question with, "Um...let me ask my husband!" because the truth was? I had still never seen even the outside of our new house!

For various reasons, I wasn't able to come along with Patrick when he viewed it originally, but at that point we were coming up hard against our deadline to either find a new place or commit to our current house for another 6 months...and I really, really hated our first house in Wales. (Mold everywhere! Aagh!) So I trusted Patrick's judgement, we applied for the new house (sight-unseen, on my part)...and I finally saw it for the first time Wednesday afternoon, about an hour after the movers had piled our boxes into it!

Patrick was more nervous than I was, actually. He warned me that the house itself was pretty ugly from the outside - typical 1970s grayness. He kept trying to second-guess what my reaction would be, and worrying that I would hate it. I was honestly pretty zen about the whole thing - as long as we were safely out of our last house, I didn't care where we were! - but because of that, I had low expectations. Then I actually stepped inside...

...and oh. Outside, yeah, it's nothing special. But inside? It is full of light.

We've been living in dark houses for years now - townhouses and duplexes with never enough windows. This house? Not only is it the biggest house we've ever rented - and the first one with a (big!) back yard we can actually use - but there are just so many windows! When you sit in the living room, you can look out one huge window to the pretty front garden and then turn in your chair to look at the big glass doors on the other side of the house, leading out to our back yard.

I don't know if I can express just how giddy all this light and space has been making me. Better yet, we've had bizarrely beautiful, sunny, warm weather. We moved in Wednesday night, and I've pretty much spent every daylight hour since then hanging out in our back yard. (It even has a cute stone pig in the garden! We've named him Pippin.)

So it was the right week to get some news that was necessary and unavoidable but still a little sad for me personally. The US publishing date for A Most Improper Magick has definitely been shifted to Spring 2011. (The date you see on Amazon may or may not be the right one - I'm going to hold off a little while on announcing the exact date here or on my website, until I'm 100% certain that I'm giving you guys the right info.) The main reason for that is that the publishing team is working on a brand-new cover for the book. I still have no idea what that cover will look like, but I can't wait to find out.

(And the UK publishing date, as far as I know, is still remaining the same - August 1, 2010. I did just see a draft of that cover yesterday, and it's fabulous! I can't wait until it's ready to share.)

My professional self knows that the date change was necessary and important, and it's always worth waiting to have the best, most commercial cover possible. My whiny, impatient inner self is sad to have to wait longer to hold the book in my hands. But luckily, when I'm lying on the grass in the rare, beautiful Welsh sunshine, it's hard to feel bad about anything.

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Yes! After living in two different houses that were really beautiful & picturesque from the outside but dark & damp on the inside, I've finally figured out that it really is the inside that matters most with houses just as much as with people!